"The plastics industry spent decades convincing consumers that throwing used products stamped with the “chasing arrows” symbol into a curbside bin meant they would be recycled. Now, amid growing awareness that many of those items never get reprocessed, the industry is championing a pair of proposals in Congress that would give misleading recycling claims the support of federal law."
"Antibiotic-resistant bacteria are pervasive in streams and rivers downstream of large Wisconsin livestock operations, increasing the risk of superbugs that make people sick and cannot be treated, according to a new study. The water contamination likely stems from high use of antibiotics in animals housed in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, according to the study."
"PFAS chemicals are everywhere. Can new technologies get rid of them for good?"
"A few days before Christmas in 2023, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency received a complaint through its National Response Center: “There has been a horrible smell in the air for almost a week,” the caller said, according to state records. “It’s so bad it’s making people throw up.”"
"A global supply shortage and U.S. tariffs have roiled the aluminum market this year, putting greater pressure on the United States to produce more of its own metal. ... Recycling aluminum, on the other hand, uses only 5% of the energy needed to make virgin metal in smelters, and the U.S. has an abundance of scrap.
"Norma Lopez Cadena tries to keep her granddaughters indoors — out of sight from the 65-foot flare burning excess gas from more than a dozen oil wells."
"At SA Recycling Terminal Island, a worker using a crane builds a 20-foot-high mountain of crushed trucks, buses and cars. ... The shredded steel and upholstery release toxic material such as lead, zinc and copper.
"California regulators broke state environmental laws by allowing polluters to buy clean fuel credits from large farms that are extracting gas from manure, a policy that harms poor communities and perverts the state’s clean air program, four advocacy groups allege in a lawsuit."
"Up to a quarter of all plastic flowing from rivers into the ocean are microplastics — delivering more than 260,000 metric tons in 2022, according to a new study published last week in Science." "Nearly all of the pollution comes from rivers in developing countries. High plastic use, mismanagement of waste, strong rainfall and high solar radiation are major factors."
"The City of Reno and Truckee Meadows Water Authority (TMWA) broke ground last week on an Advanced Purified Water Facility, a plant that will treat roughly 2 million gallons of wastewater a day to make it compliant with drinking-water standards and send it into a groundwater aquifer near Stead Airport, a first for Nevada."
